Veria - Claim Fact Check

80%

Fact Check Analysis

Reasoning:

David Lammy did make highly controversial remarks about the European Research Group (ERG) on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show in April 2019¹².
When asked whether his previous comparison of the ERG to Nazis and South African apartheid was appropriate, Lammy replied: "I would say that that wasn't strong enough"²¹. This implies he considered the ERG to be at least as extreme as, if not worse than, the Nazis.
Lammy also stated: "I don't care how elected they were – so was the far right in Germany"²³, explicitly drawing a parallel between the ERG and the far right.
He described the ERG as enabling "this extreme hard-right fascism" and criticized Jacob Rees-Mogg for sharing content from the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which Lammy called "the horrible, racist AfD party, a party that's Islamophobic and on the far right"²¹.
However, the exact phrase "worse than the far right" does not appear in any of the reported sources as a direct quote. Lammy's precise formulation was that comparing the ERG to Nazis was "not strong enough" and that the far right in Germany was also elected².
The claim accurately captures the substance and extreme nature of Lammy's remarks, which were widely reported and criticized at the time, but uses slightly different wording than what was directly quoted in news reports.

Overall validity: 80%